AMERICAN SPECTATOR STANDS BY REPORT: Obama Officials Sat On Damning Obamacare Info Until After Congressional Vote

This is a Big F***ing Deal.The Obama-Pelosi Regime took control of one-sixth of the nation’s economy when they passed their nationalized health care bill and signed it into law in late March. The bill was never popular but democrats persisted and rammed the bill through Congress. Now, there are reports that the Obama Administration sat on damning information and hid it from the public until after their bill was passed into law.* * * * *

The results from the HHS report that was released more than a month after the vote were devastating for Barack Obama and democrats. It is not likely they would have been able to ram their health care bill through Congress if the American public knew the bill would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on Americans.

The report released by Medicare and Medicaid actuaries predicted that medical costs will skyrocket, rising $389 billion 10 years. 14 million will lose their employer-based coverage. Millions of Americans will be left without insurance and millions more may be dumped into the already overwhelmed Medicaid system. 4 million American families will be hit with tax penalties under this new law.

Of course, these were ALL things that President Obama and Democratic leaders assured us would not happen.
Via Special Report:

On Monday the American Spectator reported that a damning health care report generated by actuaries at the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department was given to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the health care vote. Sebelius and the Obama Administration reportedly hid the report from the public until a month after democrats rammed their nationalized health care bill through Congress.The Prowler reported:

“The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care ‘reform’ law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken. ‘The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote,” says an HHS source. ‘Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think.’…’We know a copy was sent to the White House via their legislative affairs staff,’ says the HHS staffer, ‘and there were a number of meetings here almost right after the analysis was submitted to the secretary’s office. Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report.’ In the end, the report was released several weeks after the vote…”

On Tuesday, Chief Medicare Actuary, Richard Foster, responded to the report. Foster claimed that HHS did not finalize their report until April 22. Ben Smith at The Politico reported:

An online article in The American Spectator about the most recent analysis by the CMS Office of the Actuary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is completely inaccurate. We began working on the reconciliation bill for the health reform legislation once it was publicly issued on March 18 – three days before the House vote took place on March 21. Because of the details and complexity of the legislation, it wasn’t possible to estimate the package before the Senate vote. We began work on the estimates right away, but we didn’t finalize them until the afternoon of April 22…

Consistent with the Office of the Actuary’s longstanding independent role on behalf of Congress, we did not seek approval or clearance from HHS (or anyone else) before issuing our analysis.

After the first report was published on Monday, I contacted The American Spectator.On Thursday, they responded with an update on the Prowler Blog. They are standing by their report that senior HHS officials knew before the MArch 21 vote that the then-bill would increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on Americans.The American Spectator reported:

Several points related to the push back by the Obama Administration and the Medicare’s Office of the Actuary and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to our recent post regarding the office’s report on the Obama health care reform legislation. Recall, the study determined that the law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, when the administration had claimed that the law would do neither.

The Prowler reported via sources inside Health and Human Services that data from the study that indicated that costs would hit consumers in the pocketbook was made available to the senior officials in HHS, prior to final passage of the legislation in the House. The report never stated that it was submitted for approval. Such reports by “non-political” or “nonpartisan” entities inside Cabinet departments, such as the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Department of Justice, routinely provide, to senior leadership offices in a department, studies and reports with data that often run counter to an Administration’s liking, and often before those reports are released to the media or the public.

It should be noted that in the Bush Administration, such reports were often leaked to reporters days before officials in the administration received them, allowing the “nonpartisan” agencies to shape their facts and studies with almost no push back from the departments in question.

Our sources stand by the facts that prior to final passage of the health care reform bill on Sunday, March 21, the Office of the Actuary had provided senior leaders inside HHS with data that indicated the then-bill would increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on Americans. And that data was not provided to anyone publicly until after the legislation was passed.

That the report was issued after the bill’s passage is not in dispute. What is in dispute is who had data and when were those estimates initially available.

There you have it.
Democrats and the Obama Administration sat on damning information about their health care legislation and released it only after the bill was passed into law. This is certainly unethical and most likely criminal.This is a Big F***ing Deal.

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